CEJ#4-STATE

Orion

SFC

2/13/13

Carolyn Jones

Lone Birds of Their Species Winter Here.

Summary

In the Bay Area, every winter the sky is filled with millions of migrating birds:   mallards, avocets, Canada geese, western sandpipers and one Tufted duck.  Tufted ducks live in Asia, but every year, the same duck  ditches his flock and flies to Oakland.  While many of his friends wait in Thailand, this duck paddles along the Lake Merritt instead.  Hes not the only bird that's off track though.  San Francisco is the home of a Eurasian wigeon, and Monterrey Bay holds an arctic loon that should really be in Japan.  John sterling, a wildlife biologist in Woodland said that  "These weird birds can show up unexpectedly, at any time. To see one can be totally mind-blowing,"

Response

I thought this article was pretty cool because I had known that birds sometimes fly off coarse and end up somewhere totally unexpected for them, but I didn't know that it happened so close to where we live! I thought that it was pretty amazing that the same tufted duck comes here to Oakland every year. This duck is also not even from our continent. It is from Asia.  It's pretty cool that a duck would fly thousands of miles just to come and see us! maybe the duck just likes the weather here, but its still pretty cool.